He grinned. “Easy to find these pants in the dark.”
“It’d be easy to spot them on Mars in the night sky with the naked eye.”
“They blind the bad guys,” he claimed, still grinning. “Anyway, Dallas, it looks real. This guy, I mean. He looks real.”
“Nothing about this guy looks real,” she corrected. “I want you to take this in to EDD for a full anal.”
She looked down at her com when it signaled. “Warrant’s in. Let’s open those lockers.”
“You’re not going to like this,” Roarke said as they walked back. “But I agree with McNab.”
“Yeah, I figure those pants could blind somebody if they stared at them too long.”
“Something I try to avoid. I also have to agree with him that your killer doesn’t look as if he’s wearing a disguise.”
“Because it’s a combination. Disguise and some kind of powerful drug.”
“How does he blink?”
That put a hitch in her stride. “What?”
“If his eyes aren’t real, if he’s using devices for the size, the shape, how does he blink? He looked directly at the security camera at several points, and his eyelids closed and opened. He smiled, if you can call it that. His jaw shifted, his mouth turned up. And we both saw him contort his body in impossible ways, and move at considerable speed.”
He did have a damn good eye, she thought.
“If he’s a scientist—and he damn well is—he’s figured out how to devise something, and he’s taking something that boosts his adrenaline. Monsters exist,” she added. “But they’re flesh and blood. They’re human, just like the rest of us. It’s what’s inside them that’s twisted. This guy isn’t some Frankenstein monster.”
“Actually, I was thinking of another classic. Mr. Hyde.”
“You’ve got to lay off those old vids,” she commented, and led the way to the lab.
“If you can believe a scientist can create devices and substances to disguise himself this way, why isn’t it possible for that scientist to create something that causes him to be this way?”
“Because,” she said as they approached the door, “appearing and being are different things.” She paused outside the door. “Maybe—maybe—there’s been something going on in this lab that’s whacked. Something botched. And we’re going to salvage Rosenthall’s records and find out. But for now, we’ve got a killer on a spree, and none of my suspects pop out as a fucked-up science experiment.”
“Maybe the more human face is the real disguise.”
With that thought planted in her head, she walked into the lab.
Police business moved forward, with sweepers and the dead crew already at work. With Roarke she headed straight back to the lockers.
She thought of the destruction of the lab and the open, unbroken door of the serum lockup.
“No point in busting them open since you’re here.”
“None at all,” Roarke agreed.
It didn’t take him long. As he moved down the line of lockers uncoding the locks, she called Peabody in for the search.
And hit pay dirt in Pachai Gupta’s.
Eve took out the silver pipe.
“Weighted it for extra punch. And he didn’t even clean it thoroughly,” Eve noted. “There’s sti
ll some blood, some matter. It shows some nicks and dents where it hit bone.”
“He loved her—Darnell.” Peabody shook her head. “It was all over him, Dallas. Love and grief, all over him.”